Indian Doctors use iPhone for remote diagnostics
I had mentioned about technology fitting serendipitously in developing countries in an earlier post. Just came across this news item which shows yet another use of a consumer device for an unintended but highly useful application.
Pediatric eye surgeons in India and elsewhere find that the iPhone’s security and features makes it the best platform to be used in tele-opthalmology to cure Retinopathy of Prematurity (RoP). An Indian eye hospital is piloting software that will push retinal images collected from patients in remote locations to the doctors’ iPhones. They can then quickly send their diagnosis and recommendations from their iPhones to the doctors in the location nearest to the patient. Laboratory assistants take pictures of the retinas of prematurely born babies and transmit them via broadband to pediatric eye surgeons, who could be hundreds or thousands of miles away.
It is envisioning of applications like these that will help to bridge the digital divide